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Barclays is losing its deputy chairman

Sir Mike Rake is likely to leave the bank by the end of the year.

by Rachel Savage

Published: 15 Jul 2015

Last Updated: 13 Oct 2015

Just one week after Barclays axed its saintly chief executive Antony Jenkins, news leaked out that its deputy chairman Sir Mike Rake is also set to leave. The outgoing president of the CBI has agreed to become chairman of payments processing company WorldPay, which is gearing up for an IPO according to Sky News.

Rake hasn’t officially handed in his resignation, but he is nonetheless set to leave by the end of the year a Barclays spokesperson said, contingent on regulators letting him hold two senior financial roles at once.

The veteran businessman, also currently chairman of BT, had orchestrated Jenkins’ sacking (as admitted by the bank, in a rare moment of big business honesty), asking incoming Barclays chairman John McFarlane to lead the bank in the interim.

McFarlane officially starts on Friday, and has promised to ‘re-energise’ the bank and streamline its bulky top-level decision-making. Another round of job cuts is probably also on the cards. No doubt ‘Mack the Knife’s’ life will be easier if Rake can stay on to help find a successor for both Jenkins (who he said yesterday could take six months to replace) and himself.